Sandra asks: “Why don’t my photos of my AirBNB look any good?”
Sandra shoots mostly family portraits in the studio and on location, but when asked by a relative to take some photos of their AirBNB property, she was floored by the problems she was encountering in her pictures and her client was not happy.
There were two major issues with her photos:
None of the vertical lines the photos were parallel to the edge of the frame causing the vertical lines to converge.
All photos which included windows were shown, all of the highlights were blown out.
Converging lines and blown out highlights
Converging lines
Linear Perspective
Let’s tackle the problem of the converging lines first. What we’re really looking for is to find a position with the camera where all of the vertical lines in the room are parallel to the edge of the photo. This means paying attention to the forward and backward tilt of the camera, plus the height of the camera from the floor.
When we point the camera downward, or below the horizon, all of our vertical lines will tend to converge toward the centre of the bottom of the frame. Conversely, when we point the camera upward, above the horizon, our vertical lines will converge toward the centre of the top of the frame. You can see in the photos to the right that all of the vertical lines converge downward and you can tell that Sandra is taller than average and/or that she is pointing the camera down.
Exposure Bracketing
Blown out highlights
Exposure bracketing is a lot less intimidating than it sounds and blowing out highlights is a very common problem when shooting interiors. The problem that photographers face is that the light shining through the windows is a lot brighter than the light in the room, so they’re forced to decide on what subject to expose for. In this case, exposing for the room will force the light of the windows to blow out.
The solution to this is to set your camera up on a tripod and to take multiple photos in exactly the same position but with different exposures, generally three photos, one to expose for the subject, one to expose for the brightest areas of the image, and one to expose for the shadows. These three photos are then edited (composited) together to create one final image.
Most cameras have exposure bracketing built in as a feature, however the process is very simple if you decide to do it manually.
Our team demonstrated these two topics when Sandra came to hire a tripod and lens before going back to reshoot the AirBNB. Here are some of her results. You can see how much her photos have improved.
